DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Instead of exchanging lineup cards, they should have exchanged microphones.
Instead of going to the mound to make pitching changes, they should have just climbed up to the booth and announced them.
This was it -- live from beautiful Dunedin Stadium on Wednesday -- Ted Koppel's favorite spring-training event of all time: the first-ever meeting between two managers who had spent all of their previous non-playing lifetimes as broadcasters.
|  | | Buck Martinez spent 14 years as a broadcaster for Toronto, but now finds himself calling the shots. |
In the first-base dugout, the pioneer: Houston's Larry "Golden Throat" Dierker, now in his fifth year in the manager's office.
In the third-base dugout, the new guy: Toronto's Buck "Pearls of Wisdom" Martinez, now in his 19th Grapefruit League game of learning how to imitate John McGraw.
It was history for sure. But was it baseball history? Or broadcasting history?
"Because of Larry Dierker and his success," Martinez said Tuesday, "this became something people could think about. ... I'm sure he had a lot to do with the Blue Jays even considering me."
"It's funny," Dierker said. "I don't feel like a pioneer. But I guess I understand how people could think I've taken on that role. Before I did it, it was very unconventional. If anybody even considered it, you'd have gone, 'Ah, nooooo. That's not gonna work.' "
But then a funny thing happened after Dierker got lured down to the field in 1997 after 18 seasons in the broadcast booth:
It did work.
His team won the NL Central in his first season. Then he won again in his second season. Then he won again in his third season.
And now, all of a sudden, he's got company. The Blue Jays hired Martinez to manage. The Diamondbacks hired Bob Brenly. And there's no telling who might be next if these guys win.
Tom Brokaw? Geraldo? Chris Berman?
Anything's possible now, thanks to Larry Dierker.
Hard to believe that back when Dierker was hired, just a few short years ago, it was such an outrageous idea that even he was comparing it to an Apollo mission.
"When they asked me if I wanted to do it," he recalled, "I thought it was kinda like if somebody told you there was a space ship leaving for the moon next week and they told you you could go along. The first thing you think is: 'Nah. I'm too tall to fit in the capsule.' Or something like that. You think of every excuse in the book.
"And then you realize: Not everyone has a chance to go to the moon. So let's go."
And he did. Now, 648 games later, he's the guy dispensing the veteran wisdom to the new astronauts on the pad.
"He gave me some advice, just about the timing of things," Martinez said Tuesday. "He told me the game moves a lot slower up there. You've got cameras all over the field. You've got replays. You see the game in a whole different way. He said the innings go a lot quicker down here."
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I
don't feel like a pioneer. But I guess I understand
how people could think I've taken on that role.
Before I did it, it was very unconventional. If
anybody even considered it, you'd have gone, 'Ah,
nooooo. That's not gonna
work.' ” |
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— Larry Dierker on moving from the broadcast booth to a manager |
Not on the actual clock on the wall, of course. But on the brain clock. And that's something Martinez has only begun to experience.
"In the dugout," Dierker said, "the count is always 3-and-0 -- so are you going to let the guy hit or not? Now it's 3-and-2 -- so are you going to send the runner or not? You've got a guy on third -- so are you going to play the infield up or back? There are a lot more things going on than just whether to change pitchers.
"Situations are presenting themselves constantly. And the game must go on. The pitcher is going to throw that next pitch. ... At first, you want to say, 'Wait, man. Stop the game and let me think about this for a minute.' But you can't wait. You've got to make all those decisions while the game is going on."
But the moves are different even when the game isn't going on. He's learned that, too.
For 18 years, Dierker related to players only as a broadcaster -- just as Martinez has done in Toronto for the last 14 years. So for all those years, they related to players one way. And now they have to relate to those same players in a totally different way.
"That's been an interesting aspect for me," Martinez said, "to see how players react when I talk. I'm always watching their eyes. So many of them don't have any idea that I played, or that I played for 17 years. They relate to me as a broadcaster."
But Dierker said he discovered early on that players were going to look at him as a whole different creature once he put that uniform on.
"My first spring," he said, "we had a pitcher named Mike Gardiner who was trying to make the team as a nonroster guy. He was an older guy, 30 or so. And he didn't throw that hard. ... So a few weeks down the road, I called him in to cut him. He was the second guy to get cut. He was a very mild-mannered guy. And I didn't think he'd ever utter a curse word.
"Well, he practically turned the office upside-down. He said, 'I never got a chance. You lied to me.' And that was the day I said, 'This is going to be harder than I thought.' You don't want to have that kind of impact on people's lives."
Except it goes with the territory. Back when these guys were just talking into a microphone -- or playing, for that matter -- "all you had to do was perform," Dierker said. "You just do your own job. You don't have to worry about anybody else's job."
But as a manager, you have to worry about everybody else's job. And everybody is worrying about your job. Which doesn't always do wonders for your popularity. That might be hard for two guys as likeable as Martinez and Brenly to digest right now. But they'll learn.
"I don't think you should be (the players') friend," Dierker said. "I don't think you can even try. But you should have a respectful relationship. It's not a dictatorial thing, but somebody has got to make the decisions. And that's me. You're not going to keep them all happy. And if they're not happy, they're not going to like you. That's just the way it is.
"But even the guys who are playing every day are 20-30 years younger than you. So you're not going to be their buddies. You can't be."
Yet one thing Martinez said he learned from talking to Dierker is that you still need to listen to your players -- and listen closely enough that you can read between the lines.
"One thing I found interesting that Dierk told me," Martinez said, "was that back in his first year, Craig Biggio kept coming up to him and asking, 'Are we going to take infield today?' And Larry kept saying, 'Well, yeah.'
"Finally, he said to (bench coach) Mike Cubbage, 'Why is he always asking me if we're going to take infield.' And Mike said, 'Because the Braves don't take infield.' That was his way of saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't take it every day, either.' But you've got to listen so you really hear your players."
Four seasons later, he is full of tips like that. The best advice Dierker has, though, is as basic as a 3-2 fastball.
"Don't panic," he said. "Over the course of a season, there are times you play well and times you don't. You have streaks. You have slumps -- as a hitter, as a pitcher, as a manager.
"There are going to be times where every time you try to steal, you get thrown out. And every time you try a hit-and-run, the guy hits into a line-drive double play. And every time you change pitchers, they give up a hit to the first guy. But then there are times when everything you do works.
"So my only advice is: Don't panic. When things don't go your way, assume that eventually, they will. The nature of the game and the nature of life is, it's cyclical."
And eventually, of course, the cycle spins you right out of a job. After months of rumors last season, Dierker found that out firsthand. But he knew it all along, he said, even four years ago -- back when his friends were telling him he was nuts to leave the security of the booth.
"The fact was, I knew I wasn't that far from being able to take my pension," he said. "I knew I was going to get fired. But that was the worst thing that could happen: You get fired. And if you get fired, then what? And 'then what' wasn't so bad."
For Brenly and Martinez, there are no worries yet about the 'then-what' portion of this no-win mess they've gotten themselves into. That comes later. It all comes later.
But at least Buck Martinez could look across that field Tuesday and be grateful he didn't feel like he was going to the moon.
Jayson Stark is a Senior Writer at ESPN.com.
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